Viewing Your Computer’s Performance Rating

Windows 8 scales aspects of your system up or down to suit its hardware home. With games, for example, Windows 8 enables certain features only if the hardware can support them. Other features scaled for the computer’s hardware are TV recording (for example, how many channels can it record at once?) and video playback (for example, what is the optimal playback size and frame rate that doesn’t result in dropped frames?).

The tool that handles all of this, not only for Windows 8 itself but also for third-party programs, is the Windows System Assessment Tool, or WinSAT. This tool runs during setup, and again whenever you make major performance-related hardware changes to your system. It focuses on four aspects ...

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